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A few months ago I had a mini-epiphany about this whole issue of Intelligent Design. It's not actually very useful in the political debate, but I found it interesting in an abstract philosophical way.
I believe in Strong AI. (Well, "believe in" is a loaded term. Let's say "subscribe to the notion of".) Strong AI says, roughly, that any entity or system that behaves like an intelligent consciousness (i.e., that can pass a Turing test) is, in fact, an intelligent consciousness. Another way of looking at it is that there is no distinction between "mind" and "brain"; consciousness isn't something metaphysical apart from the physical brain, it's simply an emergent property of a system, whether it be a functioning human brain or a computer running sufficiently complex AI software. (I guess the bumper sticker would be "Cylons are people too!")
So what does this have to do with Intelligent Design? Simple: the results of the process of evolution over many millennia are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness; therefore, the process of evolution is an intelligent consciousness. Well, perhaps it's a little weird to ascribe "consciousness" to a process that just performs one specific task (creating new forms of life) and couldn't actually participate in a Turing test. But my point is that it is intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence, and there's no need to posit something metaphysical apart from the physical biosphere of Earth in order to explain humans and finches and platypuses and Venus flytraps.
I believe in Strong AI. (Well, "believe in" is a loaded term. Let's say "subscribe to the notion of".) Strong AI says, roughly, that any entity or system that behaves like an intelligent consciousness (i.e., that can pass a Turing test) is, in fact, an intelligent consciousness. Another way of looking at it is that there is no distinction between "mind" and "brain"; consciousness isn't something metaphysical apart from the physical brain, it's simply an emergent property of a system, whether it be a functioning human brain or a computer running sufficiently complex AI software. (I guess the bumper sticker would be "Cylons are people too!")
So what does this have to do with Intelligent Design? Simple: the results of the process of evolution over many millennia are indistinguishable from the products of intentional design by an intelligent consciousness; therefore, the process of evolution is an intelligent consciousness. Well, perhaps it's a little weird to ascribe "consciousness" to a process that just performs one specific task (creating new forms of life) and couldn't actually participate in a Turing test. But my point is that it is intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence, and there's no need to posit something metaphysical apart from the physical biosphere of Earth in order to explain humans and finches and platypuses and Venus flytraps.
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intelligent, because it produces things that can only be produced by intelligence
But that's the rub, of course. The process of evolution isn't obviously intelligent and seems to have produced new forms of life even so. There's lots of simpler examples of systems that seem to have no discernable special qualities but whose emergent properties are surprising and seem to speak of a higher intelligence, though-- fractals, various physical processes, the perfect spirals of a snail's shell, etc. Would you say those are intelligent too?
Here's my own version of your thinking: I believe in Strong Divinity. Any entity or system that produces results worthy of being worshipped is divine. So however, whoever or whatever is reponsible for our existence gets my prayers.
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